3i 6 GIORDANO BRUNO PART 



The form which the cosmological argument takes in. 

 Bruno is that as individual things, taken singly, must 

 be referred each to a finite principle and cause, a finite 

 effect implying a finite power ; so from the point of view 

 of the universe of things, the innumerable individuals in 

 immeasurable space must be referred to an infinite first 

 cause. But to our thought the universe is only an 

 inciting cause ; we cannot know God or anything of 

 God's nature from it further than an architect or 

 sculptor can be known from one or all of his works. 

 The beauty and majesty of external nature leads us to 

 aspire to God, its source ; but a nearer spring of know- 

 God in us. ledge is in ourselves. " We are led to regard divinity 

 not as without us, separate or distant from us, but as 

 within ourselves (since it is everywhere wholly), for it 

 is more intimate to us than we can be to ourselves, since 

 it is the substantiating and most essential centre of all 

 essences and of all being." l It is from these two 

 aspects of his philosophy, the identifying of nature with 

 God, and the identifying of the true being of each of 

 us with God, that Bruno has been described as a Pan- 

 theist. So far, however, as this term implies the identity 

 of the individual things with each other, the conception 

 that all things are one, not in the sense of forming a 

 unity of differents, but in the sense of an indifference 

 or uniformity of all, the term " Pantheism " would 

 give a very false impression of Bruno's religious 

 belief. It is neither the Pantheism which reduces all 

 to a lifeless one, in which all differences are merged, 

 nor that which breaks up the one into a many in 

 which all differences are lost ; but the Pantheism of 

 a living, self- manifesting One, which is throughout 

 eternity unfolding itself in the diverse units of the 



1 Op. Lot. i. i. 68, etc. 



